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''m^D senate {I^oc-- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 



AN ADDRESS 



COMMEMORATING THE BIRTH OF DANIEL WEBSTER 

AT HIS BIRTHPLACE AT FRANKLIN, N. H. 

AUGUST 28, 1913 



DELIVERED BY 



HON. SAMUEL W. McCALL 

jt 




PRESENTED BY MR. S^kllTH OF MICHIGAN 
SEPTEMBER 29, 1913.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
191.3 







n. OF 0. 

m 4 1913 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 



[Address of Hon. Samuel \V. McCall at the birthplace of Daniel Webster, at Franklin, N. H., Aug. 28, 1913.] 



You do me an honor which w^oukl more worthily be borne by a son 
of New Hampshire when yon ask me to speak to yon on an occasion 
especially commemorating the kinship between Daniel Webster and 
this splendid little C'ommonwealth. She is the proud mother of 
many great sons. In art, in letters, in oratory, in statesmanship, and 
in whatever contributes to our civilization the Nation indeed owes 
her a heavy debt. But I think I may say without disparagement of 
the others that we meet to-day to do honor to the greatest of her 
children. Proud as jou are of Webster, you recognize that his fame 
is no mere local concern of your ow^n, but a precious possession of the 
whole Nation. And you consecrate this place to-day as a national 
shrine to wdiich all Americans may come and have their patriotism 
rekindled. 

It is a very human trait that leads us to commemorate on all 
suitable occasions the lives of great men. We celebrate their birth- 
days. We look for the anniversaries of great happenings associated 
with their fame and commemorate them. We seek out the spots 
where they were born, the houses in which they lived, and we affec- 
tionately mark them. And the Scotch, as if shrewdly to note the 
event which makes reputations secure; celebrated the one hundredth 
anniversary of the death of their great poet. It is a good trait, but it 
would be a better one if men would not so often fail to show their 
appreciation while the object of it still lived. It is a poor requital 
that the loving homage of later generations can make for the cold 
neglect which contem])oraries have l^estowed upon some man of 
genius. 

But among all the occasions of the character of which I have spoken 
there is none that comes quite so closely to the heart or so vividly 
brings the life of a great man before us again as that which we observe 
to-day. It is more than an occasion based upon the calendar when 
w^e strive for a brief moment to arrest the steady and resistless flight 
of time. When w^e celebrate the birth we celebrate the dawning of 
a fame. It may have been a birth under most unpromising sur- 
roundings, shadowed by poverty and w^ant. It may have been 
u})on a bleak hillside in some poor country, the boundaries of which 
hold none too good oj)portunities even for its most favored children. 
But it is given those wdio follow to see the end from the beginning 
and not to be shut in by the doubt and darkness that envelop the 
cradle. Thus it is that the Christian world takes its inspiration from 
the manger at Betldehem. Thus it is that we seek out the little 
hut where Lincoln was born as marking the spot where heaven 
touched the earth and wrought a prodigy. And so to-day you bid 

3 



4 DANIEL WEBSTER. 

US come to the birthplace of Daniel Webster and to gather strength 
from looking upon the same hills and fields and valleys that he first 
looked upon on his commg into the world. Here and in the near 
neighborhood he made his home until he came to manhood. Spread 
out before you are the fields over which his young feet sped. Not far 
away you may hear the plashing of the river and the singing of the 
brooks where the old English sailor taught him to fish. Here were his 
father and mother and liis brother Zeke, between whom and himself 
there was a comradeship which may serve forever as an example to 
brothers. All these scenes were absorbed by his young spirit and 
became a part of the fiber of his being. How our patriotism is 
stirred as we consider the wondrous destiny that was wrought out 
between the first glimpse of the world taken upon this spot and the 
last weary look out of the Marshfield windows. 

It surely was not an unpropitious beginning of a career. Poverty 
there was in plenty. But there was a certainty that hard work 
would wring a living from the soil, and there were great stores of 
health in the bracing air of these hills. Poverty of that sort is far 
better than the luxury which pampers and clogs the child of for- 
tune. It sets the mind and body at work and gives them the neces- 
sary discipline of labor. It awakens the combative energies and 
fosters self-reliance, independence, and fertility of invention. 

There was a fitness in the time of his birth. It was almost coin- 
cident with the birth of the Nation, with the infinite possibilities 
that lay before it, and with its political mechanism still to be shaped 
and developed so that it might serve the chief ends of government, 
both in peace and war. And so his great work waited for his com- 
ing. He learned the history of his country first hand, from a father 
who had fought in two wars, had served under the eye of Wash- 
ington, and borne an honorable part in winning our independence. 
He was reared in a home that was pure and sweet. He could have 
been brought up with no sturdier stock of men than those who 
lived about him, and liis contact with them strengthened his native 
qualities of self-reliance and courage. He was sent to two noble 
institutions of his own State, Exeter and Dartmouth, already strongly 
established, and he was educated for the bar under happy auspices. 
He must then be accounted fortunate in the beginnings of his life 
and the early associations which clustered about him. He was 
not, to use Burke's phrase, "rocked and dandled into a legislator," 
but he was disciplined in a far better school for a youth of heroic 
mold, and it maybe doubted whether any great man was ever better 
born and nurtured to be a statesman. 

To do him justice to-day, one has only to speak the general acclaim 
of his countrymen. His life left no hard riddle. It did, indeed, end 
in bitterness and sorrow. But no calumny could mar the brightness 
of his day, and the half dozen decades that have rolled away since 
his death show him to be one of the mountain summits of our liistory. 
In the swift movement of that time, how many of the lower levels 
have sunk 'below the horizon? How quickly even ^reat men have 
disappeared from the common view. But Webster glitters in the air. 
He looms up even more grandly than he did a haK century ago. 
We can comprehend niore clearly now the greatness of the work he 
did and we can see that his fame is destined to increase with the 
growth of the Nation he did so much to fasliion and to preserve. 



DANIEL WEBSTEE, 5 

He had more than one unique disthiction. For more than a quar- 
ter of a century he was by general consent the leader of the bar of his 
country. His superb argument in the Dartmouth College case, made 
when he was 36 years old, set a new standard even in our highest 
tribunal, and thence onward his services were sought in the most 
important causes before the Supreme Court and especially in those 
involving constitutional questions. He acquired a weight second 
only to that of the court itself, and his opinion is cited to-day as high 
authority. His argument in the Knapp trial, remarkable in Us effect 
upon those who heard it, will, in its published form, defy comparison 
with any other argument ever made to a jury. If he had never 
become distinguished in other fields, his preeminence at the bar 
would insure him an enduring fame. 

But his preeminence as a lawyer was the least of his great distinc- 
tions. As an orator he attained a place alone among his own country- 
men, and it is doubtful if he is surpassed by any orator who ever lived. 
He will stand the dual test of the immediate effect and the permanent 
value of what he said. He is preeminent judged by either test alone, 
and judged by a combination of the two I do not know where Ms 
rival may be found. The immediate eft'ect of speech is of the fii'st 
importance in fixing the quahty of an orator. The agitation of small 
matter with great wit, the vehement displays of passion, wdll not make 
a great orator, even if the listeners at the moment are strired to the 
point of frenzy. On the other hand, we should not accord the rank 
of a great oration to a literary masterpiece delivered in a decorous 
and drowsy fashion and leaving the audience in a condition for 
slumber rather than action. ]\luch as we should prefer the Uterary 
masterpiece to the empty declamation, the former would ha\-e faile(l 
at the moment, ju§t as the latter succeeded even if it had succeeded 
also in cheapening a cause for the next day and all subsequent time. 
A great speech must make a deep impression at the time of dehvery. 
It must also bear permanently the marks of real intellectual power. 
Mere leaders of mobs can not take their place among the great orators, 
however eft'ective they may be at the moment. Neither passion nor 
reason can bear the palm alone, but great speaking, as Macaulev said, 
must show a fusion of both. It is difficult to exaggerate in the imagi- 
nation the immediate effect of the speaking of Webster when he was 
fully aroused. George Tichnor, who was far from emotional, said of 
the Plymouth speech, ''His manner carried me away completelv — • 
it seems to me incredible — three or four times I thought my temples 
would burst with the gush of blood." Opinions like this might easily 
be multiplied concerning his other great speeches. His manner 
kindled great crowds, as it (Ud Tichnor. 

We must take account of his physical endowment for speaking. 
His voice ran the wiiole range, from the high penetrating tones to the 
rich organ notes, and its power enabled him to address men in acres. 
The majesty of his appearance lingers in his portraits and can be 
seen in every kind of art w^hich has perpetuated his features. He 
had no need to pose, since the highest effect he could hojje to attain 
coultl be no more impressive than the natural expression of himself. 
The black eyes, big and briUiant, the massive and noble head, with 
wide-arched brows, the strong and stately figure, the face looking as 
if carved out of granite and yet speaking in" every line, all gave the 
idea of tremendous power. No other figure of his time was com- 



6 DANIEL WEBSTEE. 

parable in the impression it made upon the general mind. lie seemed 
much larger than he was. William Lloyd Garrison, who differed 
from him very widely, speaks of his "Atlantean massiveness" and 
adds "his glance is a mingling of the sunshine and lightning of 
heaven; his features are full of intellectual greatness." To the same 
effect, but more picturescpie, were Sydney Smith's characterizations, 
a "steam engine in trousers" and "a small cathedral all by himself." 
Many similar opinions might be cited from Carlisle, Hallam, Theodore 
Parker, and other notable men upon both sides of the Atlantic. This 
magnificent appearance was fully matched by the character of his 
speech, and when he was deeply stirred and animated by a dramatic 
talent, which was almost the greatest of his qualities, one does not 
need to be told by his contemporaries that the eft'ect of his speaking 
was astounding. 

Fox's epigram upon Thurlow, that no man could be as great as he 
looked, was often leveled at Webster. But when one regards the 
high mark Webster sometimes reached in his speeches, one can 
wonder wdiether any man could look as great as he was. The speeches 
of his mature years show most strikingly the hterary quaUty and yet 
they had no trace of the spoken essay. First and foremost and 
throughout them all they were speeches, and showed none of the 
tricks and pedantries of the Hterary art. His first object had come 
to be to give suitable expression to his thought, and his style became 
simple and majestic because his thought was simple and majestic. 
It was shaped by the multitude of occasions which he encountered 
and mastered. He was never consciously constructing masterpieces 
and painfully fashioning built-up periods for succeeding generations 
to admire. If he made a great speech it was because a great occasion 
demanded it. He never wasted his oratory or tried to speak better 
than he could, but he naturally rose to the demand that was made 
upon him. If the occasion was a commonplace one, he did it the 
justice not to exaggerate it. If it was a very great one, he never fell 
below it. Thus his swelhng flow of speech moves on hke a mighty 
river seeking its level under the certain impulse of the law which 
governs it, now spreading itself out in languid flow, now rising to 
meet the obstructions in its path and rushing on, splendid and resist- 
less, over every obstacle. 

From the 18 volumes of his works that have been preserved one can 
extract much that is not literature and never was intended to be 
hterature. He can find a good deal of dry reading. When he was 
writing his farmer about the planting of crops, or making a speech 
upon a ceremonial occasion, he did not assume the g^-and manner. 
But from those volumes may be gleaned a great mass of genuine 
literature, perha]:»s a greater mass than can be credited to any other 
American, and some "of it deserves to rank with the best prose in 
the English tongue. But in judging it we must lemember that far 
the greater part of it was in the form of speech, and he would have 
fallen short of being the great orator he was had he subordinated 
the orator to the essayist. Literary pyrotechnics were little to his 
taste, neither would they have served his purpose, which was usually 
the severe one of swaying the judgment while he banished the preju- 
dice of those who heard him. ' Rarely did he permit himself to make 
an appeal to prejudice, but he sought to influence the action of men 
through an appeal to reason. 



DANIEL WEBSTEE. 



The difference between a speech which is real literature of its kind 
and a speech which is Hterature of another kind may be seen by read- 
ing a great speech of Webster's by the side of one of Burke's. Take 
the speech of the former, ambitiously called the "Constitution and the 
Union," but which has made the '7th of March as famous as the 
ides of the same month, and which will always be named from the 
day on which it was spoken. I am not now^ referrmg to the contro- 
vei^ted questions put in issue by that speech but to its form and 
structure, and m form and structure, while it was not his greatest 
speech, it was yet a very great one. It is simple, conversational, 
and yet condensed in style, consecutive and reasoned from beginning 
to end, rising naturally to heights of eloquence, and one can read 
every word of it at a smgle sitting and feel his interest Increase to 
the end. If the same severe test be applied to a speech of Burke's 
of equal length one will find himself disposed to hurry over parts 
of it. He will indeed become enraptured by magnificent outbursts 
here and there but he will find it discursive, amplified with the 
completeness of a philosophical essay, and lacking the simplicity and 
driving force necessary to command the attention in a speech. If 
one could leap from peak to peak he would find Burke's speeches 
delightful reading, but if he must toil pamfully across the inter- 
vening ravines and valleys he may easily understand how it was that 
that superb rhetorician and philosopher came to be called the dinner 
bell of the House of Commons. 

The great debating speeches of Webster reflect the battle note. One 
can appreciate the enormous difficulties upon him when he arose to 
reply to Hayne and can understand the concern which was felt by 
his New England friends. As he proceeded we see these difficulties 
vanish one by one imtil he has sin-mouuted them all with ease. His 
reply to the personal attack upon himself w^as crushing in its effect. 
Instead of widenuig the sectional breach by the character of his 
defense of New England he outshone his antagonist in the eloquence 
with which he eulogized South Carolina and, tramplmg sectionalism 
under his feet, he made his immortal plea for nationality and union. 
Judged by its immediate effect, by its intrinsic quality and the 
momentous influence it exerted upon the development of the Nation 
it must be accorded the first place among all speeches of statesmen. 
As a maker of history it takes rank with the great decisive battles of 
the world. 

As an intellectual product the reply to Hayne was at least equalled 
by others of his speeches. Wlien was there such another plea 
made to a jury as that in the White murder trials A great lawyer 
once said to me that he placed this speech by the side of Macbeth. 
It has the rapidity of motion, the dramatic fire, the passion, jind the 
command of the sprmgs of human action which bring to mind the 
greatest of tragic writings. 

He had the vision of the poet as well as the grasp of the statesman. 
There is indeed a vast richness of the sane imagination in such pas- 
sages as that on the greatness of England, or in the speech at the 
laying of the corner stone of the Bunker Hill Monument of which he 
said, "Let it rise, let it rise till it meet the sun in his coming. Ijct 
the earliest light of the morning gikl it and parting day linger and 
play on its summit." There is no redundancy here. There is no 



8 DANIEL WEBSTEE. 

pretense, and there is the upward sweep as unerring, strong, and 
darting as the flight of an eagle. 

He never seemed to hxbor. He attamed his great heights easily 
and without effort. When extravagance of expression was the rule 
he practiced a severe restraint. He did not uidulge in the style of 
oratory which spends superlatives upon trifles and leaves nothing 
for the great emergencies of the State. Such an example was never 
of greater moment than at a time when every economic difference is 
exaggerated into a momentous issue, has lavished upon it all the 
passionate declamation which should be reserved for threatened 
liberty, and when the cause of every self-seeking candidate is made 
synonymous with the stability of our political and social structure. 
His reason and imagination worked together and he sometimes ven- 
tiu-ed on prophecies which were fulfilled with startling literalness. 
Ten years before the Civil War, in speaking at the laying of the corner 
stone of the extension of the Capitol he addressed "the men of 
western Vu-ginia " and asked "Do you look for the current of the 
Ohio to change and to brmg you and your commerce to the tide 
waters of the eastern rivers ? . What man in his senses can suppose 
that you would remain part and parcel of Virgmia a month after 
Virginia had ceased to be part and parcel of the United States?" 
Vhginia was declared to be out of the Union on May 23, 1861, and 
the Legislature of West Vu-ginia was organized on July 2 of the same 
year. 

His literary quahty is shown not merely in speech, but in writings 
wliich were never meant to be spoken. Mr. Wifliam Everett quotes 
Samuel Rogers, whom he terms "a remarkably fastidious judge," as 
saying he Imew nothing in the English language so well written as 
Webster's letter to Lord Ashburton upon the subject of impressment 
of seamen. Whether tliis praise be too liigh or not, I do not know 
where there can be found in English a state paper that is its equal 
in dignified and restrained power and in weight of compact argu- 
ment. It was followed by no treaty, but it put an end to the discus- 
sion of a question which had been a disturbing one for more than half 
a century and had brought about one war. Nothing remained to be 
said upon the subject. 

But great as were Webster's attainments as a lawyer, orator, and 
master of Enghsh style, yet if we thought of him in a single relation 
it would be as a statesman. Undoubtedly much was due to the 
harmonious blending of all his great qualities, and the lawyer and the 
orator were in large part responsible for the statesman. But he 
possessed a peculiar quality of mind which made him right upon the 
mightiest issue in our history, and he had that dignity and distmction 
of character which ennobled every cause he touched and helped put 
our Government upon a loftier plane. He was not merely the 
greatest orator, but the most stately figure in the politics of his time. 
He was national minded. Without seeking expansion through 
imperialism and conquest, he inevitably took that view of his country 
and its institutions compatible only with its unity and greatness. 
There was an affinity between the aspirations of his nature and a 
great and free country, and it is impossible to imagine him upon the 
side of a national government with no real power and subject to the 
discords and varying whims of a score of little sovereigns. 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 9 

Our political literature was full of supjjort for nullification. Cal- 
houn's belief in it had been strengthened, if indeed he did not first 
learn it, in New England itself. There was no State in wliich it 
did not find lodgment and in some portions of the Union it was the 
prevailing belief. In the loose thmking of the day there seemed a 
necessary connection between individual liberty and that exalted 
notion of State sovereignty which made the Constitution a mere com- 
pact and not the charter of a nation. Webster inevitably ranged 
himself upon the side of nationality. He became its prophet. All 
his splendid talents he devoted to its service. He spoke in the very 
crisis of our history, when difliculties were appalling, and when the 
development of our mstitutions might easily have ])ut nullification 
in the ascendancy, and he spoke with an effect which was augmented 
with the flight of time. It is not extravagant to say that had it not 
been for him we should not to-day be one Nation. What more glo- 
rious distinction than that could a statesman have? 

And then there is the calm dignity with which he bore himself. 
If the statesman's callmg shall ever be put upon the level of the auc- 
tioneer's, as sometimes seems not unlikely, it will be only after the 
influence of Webster's example shall have ceased. He had an in- 
stinct for public service but he had high notions about the lengths 
to which one should go to secure office. He weightily declared that 
solicitation for high public office was mconsistent with personal 
dignity and derogatory to the character of the institutions of the 
country. He lived up to that declaration. He retired from the 
House of Representatives and twice again from the Senate. He 
resigned as Secretary of State to take up his law practice. He had 
an ambition to be President but he destroyed his fairest chance of 
winning the office when he was asked by a powerful body of men for a 
pledge regarding appointments to office and he refused to make it. 
'It does not consist" he said, "with my sense of duty to hold out 
promises, particularly on the eve of a great election the results of 
which are to aft'ect the higher interests of the country." 

More than once his niotives were assailed, but, exceptmg when he 
turned upon one slanderer and annihilated him, his only answer was 
to elevate his office by the manner in which he carried himself. He 
had nothmg in common with the small breed of clamorous politicians 
who defame their own virtue by always vaunting it. During the 
five years when he represented our Government before other nations 
as Secretary of State he elevated his country in the eyes of the world. 
If Carlisle was willing to back hun "as a parliamentary Hercules 
against the whole extant world," his matchless series of state papers, 
from that on Impressment to the Hiilsemann letter, establishes his 
equal preemmence in that field. 

He believed profoundly in popular government, and his democracy 
was bred in the bone. The Democrats were not democratic enough, 
he once declared. They were aristocrats. He was opposed to the 
caucus because it made ''great men little and little men great. The 
true source of power is the people." The theme of his noble Greek 
speech was against the theory that society should not have a part in 
its own government. But he believed in a popular will worked out in 
laws passed by representative assemblies, and was against anything 
resembling autocracy. The contest of the ages, he once said, has 
been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. He 



10 • DANIEL WEBSTER. 

V 

seemed the embodiment of the ideal of the Greek poet, "The ordered 
life and justice and the long, still grasp of law, not changing with the 
strong man's pleasure." 

I shall not reopen the controversy which so long disturbed the 
country over the 7th of March speech. If the making of the speech 
is conceded to have been a mistake, one can find comfort in the 
saymg of Mr. Thomas B. Reed that the man who never made a mis- 
take never made anything. But I fancy that some of the worst 
thmgs said about that speech were said by those who never read it. 
Whether or not the speech did much to avert disunion at that time, 
it is, I believe, am})ly sufficient to fight its own battles. But from the 
standpoint of his happiness it would have been better far for him if 
his good angel had led hmi out of public life before he made it. It 
set upon his track the cry of calumny as it has rarely followed any 
man. Except as it embittered his last hours, how petty it all now 
seems. With so much falsehood and so little truth, how secure and 
impregnable it leaves his fame. 

His faults were those of a great and lavish nature. If he some- 
times forgot to pay his debts he often forgot to demand his own due. 
They said he was reckless in expense. But instead of squandering 
his substance at the gambhng table, according to the common vice 
among the statesmen of his day, Ms extravagance consisted in the 
generous entertainment of friends, in choice herds of cattle, and in 
the dissipation shown in cultivated fields. If he put Story under 
tribute to serve him upon pubhc questions he himself would neglect 
the Senate and the courts and for nights and days watch by the bed- 
side of a sick boy. His faults did not touch the integrity of his public 
character and were such as link him to our humanity. If he had 
been impeccable, incapable to err, with no trace about him of our 
human clay, a Titan in strength but wdth no touch of weakness, we 
should be dedicating to-day the birthplace not of a man but of a god. 
A superb flower of our race he was still a man and he is nearer to us 
because he was a man. Product of this soil and these mountain 
winds, of this sky, the sunshine of the summer and of the wanter 
snows, the hardships of the frontier, the swift-moving currents of his 
country's life, the myriad accidents that envelop us all, we reverently 
receive the gift and thank God to-day for Daniel Webster as he was. 
We who meet here may speak for the millions of our countrymen 
when we do this homage to his memory. We reverence the great 
lawyer, the peerless orator, and the brilliant literary genius. But 
most of all we honor the memory of the statesman who kindled the 
spirit of nationality so that it burned into a flame, who broke through 
the strong bonds of sectionalism and taught men to regard their 
greater country, and whose splendid service in making his country 
what she is and what she may hope to be has won for this son of New 
Hampshire a lasting and priceless fame. 

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